One of the greatest strength of the outgoing Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, Lagos State University is his strategy in maximizing the frenzy of the media to his advantage. Fagbohun turns every LASU activity into media publicity in order to turn the public attention away from his weaknesses. With his media publicity, you would assume that a footstep into the Ojo campus of the institution takes you into El dorado. It appears that people who are close to Fagbohun know how to stroke his ego to make him feel good about himself generally because of what they want from him. Fagbohun is a demagogue who likes to be worshipped. This is why he awards contracts to his friends who are members of staff and accelerates the promotion of his cronies.

Prof. Fagbohun has been adjudged to have done generally well in bringing the institution to the attention of the public. LASU has been rated peaceful in the last five years because Fagbohun crushed all dissenting voices that are statutorily required to check his actions and inactions. There have been several media reports about how he sacked five executive members of ASUU-LASU with the ultimate enablement of the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, Prof. Adebayo Ninalowo. These concerned academic members of staff were sacked on the basis of their whistleblowing activities of Fagbohun’s year of Professorial appointment which made him ineligible to be appointed as the Vice-Chancellor. The peace of the graveyard that LASU currently displays is because of the fear that Fagbohun has created in the minds of the staff.

Prof. Fagbohun illegally suspended Prof. Babatunde Solagberu, the Provost of the College of Medicine. The College is a semi-autonomous institution. The LASU College of Medicine has its own Board of Governors in which the Vice-Chancellor is only a member. However, due to the control-freak nature of Fagbohun, he expected the Provost to be subservient to him. He cooked up stories, used the former Librarian of LASU, Dr Adebambo Oduwole to set up the Provost and subsequently suspended the Provost from his duly elected position. Unfortunately for the then librarian, the Provost was ahead of him, and he was caught in the act of bribing a junior staff to implicate him by stealing sensitive documents from his office. Sahara Reporters published this story on 14th June 2018. The audio recording can be listened to through this link: http://saharareporters.com/2018/06/14/audio-lasu-librarian-offers-nasu-staff-n25000-bribe-obtain-document-provosts-office#:~:text=News-,AUDIO%3A%20LASU%20Librarian%20Offers%20NASU%20Staff%20N25%2C000%20Bribe%20To,Obtain%20Document%20From%20Provost's%20Office&text=The%20Librarian%20of%20Lagos%20State,university%20only%20identified%20as%20Gbenga.

The 10th Governing Council under Professor Ninalowo overlooked the crime of the librarian whose punishment is dismissal from the service of the University. He is currently on sabbatical leave to Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, as Librarian.

The Vice-Chancellor does not have the power to suspend the provost of the College of Medicine who is duly elected and ratified by the Board of Governors. The same way the Vice-Chancellor does not have the power to suspend a duly elected Dean of any Faculty. Fagbohun did not only suspend the Provost, he also interdicted him. An interdiction does not last more than six months as stipulated in the LASU Laws 2004. The interdiction of the Provost has remained in force since 2018 till today. He has illegally appointed two Acting Provosts that are under his direct autocracy.

On staff salaries, Fagbohun has been paying only some fractions of staff salaries since April 2020. Majority of members of staff belong to one cooperative society or the other. The practice is that staff members save a percentage of their monthly salaries with their designated Cooperative societies. As a result, they are able to obtain loans two times their savings and buy goods from the cooperative societies to be deducted from their salaries. Fagbohun has only been able to pay some fractions of the salaries because he has failed to consistently remit staff deductions from April 2020 to December 2020. Invariably, Fagbohun has not been paying staff salaries fully since early of 2020. The debt portfolio of Fagbohun Led-Management to Cooperative Societies in LASU is over 700 million Naira. The Director of Cooperative Society in the Lagos State Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Industry has queried the Vice-Chancellor on this deficiency. Fagbohun is leaving LASU with a huge debt owed to Cooperative Societies in LASU and to external contractors running into millions of Naira for the incoming Vice-Chancellor.

The Vice-Chancellor’s inability to pay staff full salaries has not precluded him from throwing a party for himself and his cronies at the Radisson Blu Hotels, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos on 5th December 2020 with the University’s resources. It was a fanfare where money was spent lavishly while cooperative societies languish for funds.

On infrastructure, the only structure built during the five-year tenure of Fagbohun is the Makanjuola Lecture Theatre. The building was donated by Mr Aderemi Makanjuola of the Caverton Offshore Support Group. All the other buildings had been completed, but yet to be commissioned before Fagbohun came. However, Fagbohun has abandoned all the other buildings, and have not done any kind of renovations on them. Pictures of some of the dilapidated LASU structures can be seen below. World-Class University and Second Best university in Nigeria indeed.

The next Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State is likely to face an enormous challenge of stabilizing the institution against the façade of make-belief that characterises the Fagbohun Led- Administration. The 9th Vice-Chancellor would have to find a way to reconcile the rank and file of members of staff that Fagbohun has successfully sowed discord. While it will be unfair for any of the Staff Unions and Cooperative Societies to call for crisis against the next University administration on account of the debt left behind by Fagbohun, the Vice-Chancellor will have to source for external funds to be able to pay the debts.

Hmmmm